Thursday, December 22, 2016

Did you see there's going to be a Rogue One Holiday Special? I'm so excited! Here are the details:

"Over the river and through the woods...to a galaxy far, far away! Join Mon Mothma, Red Leader, and lots of BRAND NEW wacky characters as they celebrate Life Day--one year BEFORE the celebration shown in the original epic Star Wars Holiday Special. Just as you felt when you first saw that classic celebration of Star Wars seasonal spirit, the Rogue One Holiday Special will leave you wondering, "What just happened?!?"

"Although Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford couldn’t make it this year, you'll be convinced that they DID, thanks to the magic of CGI! Enjoy extended close-ups where you can see every lifelike pore on Luke's face, Leia's alabaster skin and painstakingly-rendered hair buns, and Han's devilish smirk--all of them up to 92% accurate!

"Joining the famous rebels this year are a fun batch of new additions to the Star Wars canon, including:

The Imperial Marching Band. (They may not hit all their notes, but these musicians are real troopers!)

"Finally, you won't want to miss a few special treats we have for your human eyes and ears. Singer-songwriter Sia joins us to sing "The Twelve Parsecs of Life Day" (sure to be an instant classic), and a new animated short will introduce this year's hot new action-figure-tie-in character: Darth Fett.

"You won't find this magical show on just any old streaming service this year--in fact, you won't find it on any streaming service at all! In order to recreate the magic of the most famous 1970-era science fantasy holiday special of all time, we're releasing the Rogue One Holiday Special on unlabeled VHS tapes and distributing it directly to fan conventions and comic book store discount bins.

Friday, December 9, 2016

Last weekend I ran my group through the first playtest adventure for Star Trek Adventures (which I talked about earlier, due out next summer.) I don’t want to spoil the adventure for others who might be in the playtest, so my discussion here will be general.

Basic Rules (as of this writing)

This is a playtest, so a lot of details about the game may change before publication. But I wanted to give you a brief overview of what playing the game is like.

Star Trek Adventures uses the 2d20 system, which Modiphius uses in some of their other games such as Mutant Chronicles 3rd Edition and Robert E. Howard's Conan. I’m not familiar with those, but in the STA version, you add an attribute to a skill, then roll 2d20 and hope one or both are equal to or less than that number. The game gives you ways to add more d20s (up to 5), and rolling a 1 or rolling under your skill’s specialty gets you an extra success. The number of successes you need depend on the difficulty of the task (usually 2).

Here are some other notable rules from the current playtest draft:

Momentum: When you roll more successes than you need on a given task, you can spend the extras for added effect--or save them in a group Momentum pool that everyone can use on later turns. Momentum points let you do things like add a d20 to a roll, or make a roll harder for an enemy.

Threat: Kind of the opposite of Momentum, Threat points are a pool that the GM can use to help out the bad guys. Players can choose to voluntarily add to the Threat pool to gain an extra die to roll, thus helping themselves out in the short term by risking more trouble later on.

Another chance to use my action tracker cards!

Determination: Each PC starts with several of these tokens, and they work like hero points or plot points or bennies in other games. You spend them to do cool things, and earn them by being a good player. In STA they're more powerful than Momentum points, but it does feel like there's some overlap.

Values: Each PC in the playtest had 3 Values, things like "Fortune Favours the Bold," "No Love of Violence," and "Outspoken and Argumentative." The playtest rules spell out one positive use for this and one negative. If you're rolling on something your Value might help, and you spend Momentum on it, you can get an extra Momentum point for free. And on the negative side, you can choose to gain a point of Determination if you accept a Complication from the GM. (Kind of like a GM Intrusion in Monte Cook Games's Cypher System.) It sounds like more uses for Values will be included in later rules. I think this has the potential to be core to the game's "Star Trek" feel.

Challenge Dice: When rolling damage or similar results, you use special 6-sided dice. For now we don't have specially printed dice, so we use regular six siders with the following values: 1-2 count as normal, 3-4 count as nothing, and 5-6 count as 1 plus a bonus effect. The effect differs per weapon; an example would be a knockdown effect when you're punching someone.

Injuries: Every character has a Stress track, and damage will usually come off of this. If you run out of stress, or take a lot of damage at once, your character is Injured, which in this game means you're out of the fight. You can, however, spend Determination to soldier on.

Group Impressions

Happiness is a table full of dice and playtest notes.

I enjoyed reading the playtest rules and running the game. In play, we felt that some of the rules need tweaking--especially extended tasks, which were extra hard to understand and really slowed us down--but I am optimistic about the game's future. There's a lot to like here: the system is (mostly) simple, there aren't a ton of skills, players have a lot of control over their destinies, and there's a focus on encouraging problem-solving and not just fighting.

I'm expecting the second playtest adventure in a few weeks. I hear it may include starship rules and/or character creation. Can't wait!

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Modiphius has kicked off the playtest for their upcoming Star Trek Adventures RPG. Not only is it a playtest, it's a "Living Playtest," in which the playtest reports from gamers will influence characters and maybe even events in future adventures.

When you sign up, you choose between one of four playtest ships. Your choice determines what kind of missions you'll receive, from combat missions to science missions to a balanced mix.

I'll be running each playtest mission as Modiphius releases them, so if you're in Memphis, feel free to join me! (My ship is the USS Venture, featuring a broad range of missions in the Next Generation era.)

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Mike Selinker and more than 300 other creators of games (both tabletop and electronic) have posted an open letter endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. In addition to urging Americans to vote for the Democratic candidate, the letter describes Hillary and Trump in gaming terms.

The full letter, along with the list of game creators who support it, is at this link:

Friday, November 4, 2016

This is my fifth year participating. My first was 2004, my latest was 2010, and the only year I "won" was 2007. (I take a stab at making that one publishable now and then, but it's still a mess.)

If you haven’t heard of NaNoWriMo, here’s the gist of it: In November, crazy people try to write a 50,000 word novel. This is short as novels go, but was chosen as an achievable target and a solid accomplishment. Participants “win” if they reach that word count; this is very much an honor system achievement, and the only prize is a sense of accomplishment. (What else do you need, really?)

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Halloween is near! I know these words will sound terribly dated in a year or two, if they don’t already, but I like to burn1 a playlist of my favorite Halloween music onto a CD2 so I can listen to then when I’m driving3.

(Translation key:1: record onto physical media2: a piece of plastic used to store digital music in the physical world3: people in my time didn’t have self-driving cars)

I’m due to put together a new playlist, but here’s the one I’ve been listening to for the last few years.

Monster - Fred Schneider. This monster is in his pants!

Dead Man's Party - Oingo Boingo. My favorite Halloween-related song.

Fright Night - J. Geils Band. From the original movie. Very 80s.

This Is Halloween - Danny Elfman. From The Nightmare Before Christmas.

The Blue Wrath - I Monster. Used at the beginning of Shaun of the Dead.

Partytime (Zombie Version) - 45 Grave. From Return of the Living Dead.

Halloween (She Get So Mean) - Rob Zombie, from his Halloween Hootenanny album.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of their Gumshoe system, Pelgrane Press declared last Friday, October 21, as International Pelgrane Day, and encouraged their fans to play their favorite Pelgrane games. And since all I need is an excuse, I did!

I really like the Gumshoe system. I've played two Gumshoe games, Night's Black Agents (on Free RPG Day 2016) and TimeWatch (at Gen Con 2016), and I've read a third, Trail of Cthulhu. But choosing which one to run was easy: the one my wife and I couldn't get enough of at Gen Con: TimeWatch!

The adventure I ran was “Recruiting Call," from the TimeWatch rulebook. I ran it for my group at home, using the pregenerated characters Pelgrane provided on their website.

I also got to use my action tracker cards and my Rippers bennies (as Halloween-themed "stitches").

Now my wife has played two of the pregens, Altani and Vid, and made the most of each role. I'm sure it would seem like obvious pandering if I declared her the MVP of the game, so I won't do that. (She totally was.)

I don't want to spoil any details of the adventure, but I can mention it involved time-traveling Nazis and a famous historical figure. At one point, the players have to prevent a Nazi from keeping the historical figure's parents from meeting and marrying. My friend Jerrod (playing Skegg) came up with the most entertaining plan I heard all night: he would use Skegg's disguise ability to impersonate the mother of the historical figure and get the Nazi to fall in love with--and marry--Skegg. (Things didn't exactly go that way, but I wish they had.)

Some other highlights from our game:

Skegg disguising herself as a Nazi general, Hitler, and Elvis.

The players researching history on their phones, saving us all from listening to me drone on about everything.

The team going back in time to arrange a "hunting accident."

The players cleverly using Preparedness to seed the area with horses and C4, “Bill and Ted” style.

The PCs realizing that they had to avoid killing an enemy that they already saw die later in life.

This was a good example of an improvisational adventure. It had a linear structure, in that scene one led to scene two which led to scene three, but within each scene the players had plenty of leeway in how they tackled the situations. That’s a little outside my comfort zone, and I’m glad I got to practice running a game in this style. I want more.

I dressed up for the occasion.

How about you? Are you a Pelgrane fan? Did you do anything fun on International Pelgrane Day (whether related to their games or not)?

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

A few weeks ago, I posted about "Roxanne," my fictional game that is Invisible Sun For Cheapskates. While I was writing that, I asked my friends Jenny and Jason if they'd provide me with photos of themselves looking confused--to use at the end of the post, showing a typical gamer's response to the wonder that is Roxanne. I don't even think I told them all the details of *why* I needed it, but "look confused" was all they needed.

The photo I used was only one of many that Jenny and Jason provided for me. I found the rest so entertaining that I had to share them here.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Star Trek is 50! Can you believe it? September 8 was the 50th anniversary of Star Trek’s television debut. I was still -3 years old at the time, so I didn’t catch the premiere, but as soon as I was able to start watching the reruns, I did. I really got into the show in junior high, when I had a crush on a girl who—amazingly—knew all the episode titles. (I duplicated this skill over the next year by mentally repeating each title as I read the James Blish episode novelizations; this was in an era before we could watch anything we wanted on demand!)

There's another Star Trek anniversary this year--at least, for me there is. Thirty years ago, in 1986, Star Trek became the foundation of my first roleplaying experience, when I found FASA's Star Trek: The Role Playing Game in my local Toys By Roy. I had heard of Dungeons and Dragons before this, but since I wasn’t a fan of fantasy at the time, I was immune to its charms. Star Trek, though, that was a different story!

My 2nd Edition box, released in 1983

I played this game SO much—probably more than any other game. It came in a box (like many games back then did), which held three thin rulebooks and one of those old 20-sided dice numbered 0 to 9, the kind of die that predated the d10. And the kind you had to fill in the grooves yourself with crayon or marker, if you wanted it to be readable.

My Star Trek "10-sider."So well-used it's nearly round!

The game used a percentile system for both attributes and skills, and boy were there a lot of skills. (Now that I think about it, these two elements probably primed me to fall in love with Call of Cthulhu when I encountered it a year or two later.) Although the first two Star Trek movies had already been released, the boxed set focused on the original series and the animated series. It covered Star Trek pretty well, I thought, with pretty good info on technology and species, and fun systems for creating planets, creatures, and civilizations. Star Trek: The Role Playing Game was also well-supported with a line of adventures, movie sourcebooks, a tactical combat game, and alternate campaign settings like the Klingon, Romulan, and Orion sourcebooks.

I still have every character I ever made for the game.

Other Star Trek RPGs have come and gone since Star Trek: The Role Playing Game (one of which I also loved), but this one will always be special to me.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

You may have heard about a new game coming from Monte Cook Games called Invisible Sun. (If you read my blog posts, then you definitely heard me mention it.) It’s a surreal tabletop RPG set for release in 2017, with a Kickstarter running right now. The game is clearly designed as a deluxe product: it’s shipping in a big fancy black box; it comes with props such as dice, cards, tokens, a game board, and a statue of a hand; some players will receive physical notes and mementos in the mail; and the sale price is nearly $200—at the entry level.

Some players may balk at that premium price tag. To those players I say…let’s make our own surreal gaming experience for just a few bucks! We’ll even go the extra step of providing both deluxe and basic level product options, where possible.

The Title

In sticking with our cheapskate theme, I didn't want to spend too much time coming up with a great title for our inexpensive masterpiece, so I just looked for inspiration from the same source that provided the title "Invisible Sun."

I know this isn't where Monte got the title. Relax.

Bingo. We'll call our game "Roxanne."

The Rules

Now let’s choose a game system. We need an inexpensive RPG that we can use to craft surreal adventures for Roxanne. Let's go with Fate Accelerated, the condensed version of the popular and versatile Fate Core system. I believe this is especially appropriate because, just as Invisible Sun will be related-to-but-not-quite Cypher System, Fate Accelerated is related-to-but-not-quite Fate Core.

Fate games use something called aspects, which are phrases that emphasize something special about a person, object, place, or whatever. For example, a character in a science fiction game might have the aspect "Upholds the Prime Directive...Usually." We can use this concept to crank up the surreality of our game. With that in mind, here's a list of surreal aspects you can use.

The Starting Adventure

Now Roxanne needs an introductory adventure. This is easy! We'll just pick a song with surreal lyrics and convert it to a loose narrative. Such as:

The PCs begin in a boat, on a river. As they float through a weird landscape featuring tangerine trees and marmalade skies, somebody calls them. It turns out to be a girl with kaleidoscope eyes. She's in danger, and something pulls her out of sight into the tangerine trees. If the PCs follow her, they pass through cellophane flowers of yellow and green that tower over their heads. Then they spot the girl again, this time with the sun in her eyes. Before they can interact with her much, she's pulled away again!The trail then leads to a bridge by a fountain, where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies. Other people are around this time, and they all smile as the PCs drift past the flowers--flowers that grow so incredibly high. Nobody acknowledges any questions about the missing girl; all they do is offer to share their pies. (Any PCs consuming pie must roll to resist its psychotropic effects.)Eventually, newspaper taxis appear on the shore, waiting to take the PCs away. If the PCs wish, they can climb in the back. The newspaper taxis lift out of the river and launch into the sky, and soon the PCs' heads are in the clouds, as they are gone from the tangerine tree forest. During flight, one of the newspaper taxis starts to lose altitude, and the PCs must find a way to repair it to avoid a crash.After a psychedelic flight, the PCs land in a train station in the clouds (and their newspaper taxis are now train cars). Plasticine porters with looking glass ties greet them as they disembark--and then they attack! After defeating the plasticine porters, the PCs find a trail of diamonds leading past a turnstile and to a room holding a familiar looking captive: the girl with kaleidoscope eyes. (Her name is Lucy.) Award XP!

(I admit that this adventure isn't strong on providing player agency, but if your players are stoned they'll have a blast anyway.)

Deluxe Cost: $13 for the CD of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, containing "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" (used above) and 13 other adventure seedsBasic Cost: $0 for text provided above (you’re welcome)

The Box

Invisible Sun will ship in a massive, elaborate, black box. I mean, check this out:

To cut costs, the box we use for Roxanne will need to be more humble. Wait, scratch that--let's say our box will be more eco-friendly...because we're going to recycle whatever box we have lying around the house! If possible, make it something surreal, to fit in with our game's theme. Take the box I've chosen, for example. Who would expect a roleplaying game to emerge from...a shoe box!

Our box only needs to be big enough to hold our cheap budget game contents, so this should be a good fit. If you want a fancier box, or can’t find a shoe box lying around the house, you can buy a cardboard or plastic box pretty cheap.

Deluxe Cost: $1.89 for transparent shoe box from the Container StoreBasic Cost: $0 for cardboard shoe box you have in your closet right now

Next we’ll see the items that need to fit in our awesome box.

The Accessories

Invisible Sun will come with lots of fancy bits and bobs, including special dice, multiple types of cards, tokens, and a game board. Let’s see how we’ll provide these amenities for Roxanne on the cheap.

Dice

Roxanne’s specialty dice will be Fate dice, made specifically for the Fate system (and Fudge system). At the budget level, just download the free Fate dice roller app. You could also, of course, repurpose 6-sided dice you already have sitting around.

Deluxe Cost: $15 for Fate Core diceBasic Cost: $0 for Fate dice roller app, or dice you borrow from another game

Cards

Similar to the dice category, we can buy cards made for Fate called the Deck of Fate. In addition to providing die roll results on most of the cards (thus providing another cost-cutting measure, since you can skip the dice if you want), the Fate cards provide a bunch of images and symbols you can use to spark your imagination during a game of Roxanne. (“You drew a moon? Hmm. You are suddenly buried in green cheese.”)

A cheaper option is the Deck of Fate app; it’s not free, but it’s under $3. If that’s still asking too much, then do what I do and use your own collection of business cards. What could be more surreal than the surprise appearance of a plumber? For added weirdness, combine two cards, and delight the players by letting them confront bizarre allies and adversaries, such as a gastroenterologist who cuts hair.

Deluxe Cost: $15 for the Deck of Fate, or $2.99 for the Deck of Fate appBasic Cost: $0 for business cards

Tokens

Invisible Sun will include “more than 100 tokens of different types to use for the different kinds of player rewards, Vance spell management, and more” (as explained in MCG’s All the Components page). We don’t yet know what all that means, but in the meantime we can include some tokens in Roxanne to use as Fate points or whatever else we can think of. On the cheap end, I’m using something easy to find and almost completely worthless: pennies. If you want to upgrade to Roxanne Deluxe, pay a buck and use a gamer staple and my favorite form of tokens: M&Ms.

Game Board / Map

While Invisible Sun boasts a game board, a cloth map, AND a poster map, Roxanne is going to need to cut corners. I mean multi-task! We'll use a single component that can serve as both a game board and any kind of map you need. At the deluxe level, this is a small dry erase board. (It has infinite possibilities!) At the basic level, just use a sheet of paper. (It still has infinite possibilities! If you don't erase too hard.)

Hand Sculpture

Invisible Sun features a funky statue of a 6-fingered hand, called the Testament of Suns. It’s described as “an imposing resin sculpture that holds a Sooth card that is active long-term for all to see.” That’s cool, and kinda freaky, but we can match it. Behold this jewelry display hand I got on Amazon to display my Green Lantern rings. With a little help, it holds a business card game card. If this is too rich for your blood, you can just draft a friend or relative into holding a card up for you while you play Roxanne.

Deluxe: A wild artist appears

Basic: A wild dermatologist appears

More Basic: A bored teenager appears

Deluxe Cost: $8Basic Cost: $0 (depending on the availability of a sucker)

The Directed Campaign

Yikes, this one will be hard to match. The Invisible Sun Directed Campaign is an experience that the high-end purchasers unlock, in which players receive customized game material from Monte Cook Games for a year. "This includes adventure material, campaign advice, handouts, props, and special physical items. It’s like Monte himself is your GM coach, providing step-by-step advice and aids for your campaign as you run it. We’ll even send your players intriguing mystery packages tied to the campaign that are keyed to their character." (Source: Invisible Sun Kickstarter page.)

OK, no sweat, we can do this. We just need an envelope, something symbolic or unexpected to put in it, and a customized note for your player. A craft store will be your friend when executing your own directed campaign for Roxanne.

Just think how excited one of your players will be when they get this in the mail...

Deluxe Cost: $5 at a craft store will buy a sampling of buttons, feathers, bells, and other strange odds-and-ends, plus a pen like a grown-up would use, plus a few stamps and envelopes and paperBasic Cost: $.06 for an index card + $0.65 for a small box of crayons + $0.08 for an envelope + $0.49 for a stamp

We Did It!

Here's the final price tally. Roxanne Deluxe costs $72.89 (not including tax, shipping, and the ever-important handling), and Roxanne Basic will run us $4.30. Booya! I am going to pronounce our budget-saving efforts a success, and our new game--Roxanne--complete. I look forward to seeing your playtest reports, convention anecdotes, and actual play videos start to roll in. To answer your next question, yes, I'll be happy to sign your shoebox.

Playtesters enjoying the sublime mental journey that is ROXANNE.

I hope it's obvious that I'm only teasing my friends at Monte Cook Games. I'm a proud backer of Invisible Sun, I've been excited about it since I saw the announcement at Gen Con this year, and I can't wait to try it out!